At the end of the land and beginning of the day, there is a peace, a zen, when the sun just barely peeks over the sea.  It starts in your toes, your salty, salty toes that have returned to their amniotic balance.  Fronds at your back bid you farewell and the rhythm of the ceaseless waves beckon you forward.  On purpose, your ankles, then your knees, and then your hips find their way into the tide.  Just when you stop caring about the seaweed and all of its passengers taking long, passing licks at your flesh, the sandy shelf you didn’t know you were standing on gives way and you are, quite literally, in over your head.  Eyes burning, you emerge and exhale salt, returning it to where it belongs.  Probably, you are saving the lives of countless saline-dwelling creatures that would shrivel up from the lack of what you were selfishly holding in your sinus cavities.  You tread water and maintain the eco-balance between yourself and the ocean.  And just when you start to think that maybe there is no in between, that you are the ocean and it is you and everything else on this big blue ball, and your muscles relax and you are more floating than flailing, something bumps your leg in a decidedly ungentle way.  It is nature and it is neither good nor bad and there is no such thing as co-existing because it is all just existing.  Not beside each other, but as one with each other.  It both doesn’t matter at all who is president, and it matters immensely.  And it doesn’t matter if we help each other, or hurt each other because the tide will always come in and it will always go out and no matter what we do, one day our bloated, then bleached pieces will roll right in time with what it already does.  The only difference is that we won’t think about it.  We won’t have to fight it, we won’t decide to join it.  We’ll just be it.  That heavy, mean thing can bump you again for all you care.

There is that peace, that zen.
I didn’t achieve it this morning, but I hope to someday.  I’ll try again this afternoon.